You're Not Awakened. You're Anesthetised.

On nihilism, neural numbing, and the spiritual bypass hiding in plain sight.

“It’s all just consciousness. Nothing is real. Don’t attach.”

It sounds like wisdom. It has the cadence of wisdom. It borrows the vocabulary of some of the most rigorous contemplative traditions in human history. But in the mouths of people glued to their phones eight hours a day, it isn’t wisdom. It is the philosophical clothing draped over a neurological wound.

This is not a small distinction. It may be one of the most important ones we can make right now.

What the Internet Is Actually Doing to Your Brain

Let’s start with the neuroscience, because it matters enormously here.

The human brain operates across a spectrum of electrical frequencies. Beta waves (13–30 Hz) are the signature of alert, engaged, discriminating cognition — the brain in critical thinking mode. Alpha waves (8–12 Hz) mark a relaxed, receptive state. Theta waves (4–8 Hz) appear in deep relaxation, drowsiness, and passive absorption. Delta is deep sleep.

Here is what chronic high-volume internet use, and specifically doom scrolling, short-form video, and the perpetual novelty feed does to this system: it systematically suppresses beta activity and floods the brain with a degraded, junk-food version of theta. Not the rich theta of meditation or deep creative absorption, but the hollow theta of passive, hypnotic consumption.

The prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive function, moral reasoning, long-range consequence mapping, and what we might loosely call higher discernment is progressively deactivated.

What researchers are documenting in heavy internet users is functionally similar to what happens in states of hypnotic suggestibility: reduced critical evaluation, heightened receptivity, lowered volitional engagement.

In plain terms: the internet, used in the way most people use it, makes the higher functions of the brain go quiet. Not through peace. Through exhaustion. Through overstimulation so relentless that the system eventually stops mounting a defence.

The result is a person who feels strangely detached. Flat. Unmoved by things that should move them. Unable to generate motivation, outrage, tenderness, or sustained attention. A person who finds it genuinely difficult to care.

Nihilism in a Spiritual Costume

Now enter non-duality.